Date: December 17th, 2025 8:33 PM
Author: Scott Brownian Motion
The headline unemployment rate only counts people actively looking for work
Anyone working even 1 hour per week — including gig, cash, or informal labor — is counted as “employed”
Mass immigration — legal and illegal — dramatically expands the labor supply, especially at the bottom of the market
New immigrants are highly incentivized to: (i) take any job immediately, (ii) accept low pay, unstable hours, or informal work, (iii) show up in the data as “employed” almost instantly.
Illegal immigration in particular feeds off-the-books and low-hour labor that still counts as employment in surveys.
Meanwhile, native-born workers who are displaced or discouraged often stop searching and quietly exit the labor force - when they stop looking, they no longer count.
Result: labor market pressure shows up as lower wages, worse hours, and weaker bargaining power — not higher unemployment. The unemployment rate stays low because stress is absorbed through job quality deterioration.
This isn’t fake data — it’s a structural blind spot in how unemployment is measured. Other indicators (underemployment, participation rates, multiple jobholding, real wages) show far more strain than the headline number.
Bottom line: mass immigration can make unemployment look healthy while native workers feel squeezed
(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=5811513&forum_id=2).#49517977)